Galactic Vision is a space themed web application that serves as a 3D explorer for the Stellar network. The goal of the project is to give the average stellar enthusiast a resource to better understand what is happening on the stellar network. Since the stellar network has a heavy emphasis on asset transfer, I wanted to create a way that shows this activity that is both entertaining and informative. Standard Stellar explorers revolve around displaying plain text about transaction data, which can often be hard to make sense of.

This first release will focus on live data and representing the most important and easy to understand information. The presentation and ease of use for the stellar community will be prioritized before more complex information is considered. The current release supports desktop browsers. Mobile layout may be implemented in a later release.

The project is split into two areas, Stellar Explorer (visualization of stellar horizon data) and Quorum Explorer (visualization of stellar core data).

Stellar Explorer

Explorer View

Stellar Explorer represents live data about user activity on the network. Network activity can either be observed from a glance, or interacted with to get more information. The current setup involves a space station representing the stellar network as the centerpiece. As data comes in, planets are spawned around the space station to represent accounts. Particles are emitted from the planets to represent assets. The most popular cryptos are colour coded (click the ? icon to view this legend). The particles travel to the space station to be processed, then are directed to the destination planet to finish the operation.

Account View

Each planet is able to be clicked on to enter account view. This allows the user to explore the balances and recent history of the account. There will also be a transaction view to replay any transaction animation and view additional data.

History View

Quorum Explorer

Quorum Explorer

Quorum Explorer is a visualization of quorum sets. It displays a globe with official validator node locations and creates links between them to represent each nodes quorum set. The user can isolate each node to see its connections and learn more specific information about it. When viewing a node, green links represent nodes that the current node trusts, and cyan links represent nodes that trust the current node. The sidebar is sorted by trust index. The more nodes trust a specific node, the higher its trust index. Credit to stellarbeat.io for the data.

There are three ways to navigate to nodes. You can either use the side bar navigation on the left, click the pins the globe, or use the node info sidebar on the right to travel to related nodes.

End Goal

This will be an ongoing project that is constantly maintained and upgraded with new features. The vision of the project is to make a complete 3D hub that covers all areas of activity on the network. The popularity of projects such as the IOTA tangle visualizer show that interactive visualizations are one of the most effective ways to inform members of the community about the activity on the network. Being able to screenshot images of network activity and share them on platforms such as reddit is a useful way to generate discussion and raise awareness.

Coming Soon

-Ui improvements (more readable text to describe operations, cleaner navigation)
-More node information
-More account statistics
-Account search (view your own accounts planet!) [X]
-Planetary Quorum Explorer [X]
-Space station upgrade
-Tutorial/instructions page [X]

In the future

-Transaction view (replays asset transfer animation between two planets)
-Exchange activity view (same concept as the base view, but isolated to an exchange)
-Asset activity view
-Unique planet generation for each account
-Quorum history and statistics (that make sense at face value)
-Walkthroughs/tutorials on network functionality (explain how the network works with an interactive scene)

The project is still relatively early in development and more features will become available as stellar horizon & core APIs are further developed. The horizon api still has a lot of work to be done for trades related commands. The initial launch of this app includes a manually created trades stream until it is implemented officially. I will also be looking for feedback on how to improve current features as well as new features to be implemented. If you have any requests on features to be included in this app, please request them in this thread and they will be considered! Thanks.

Website is now up: Galactic Vision

Github Repo

Report bugs here: https://goo.gl/forms/4DHVl3hCSI4iLCTC2 (github issues works too)
Submit requests here: https://goo.gl/forms/BwmO7F6kXDzY8lqt1

    15 days later

    Announcement post has been updated and the site is now live!

    7 days later

    Wow. I don't know what to use, but it looks great.

    5 days later

    Thanks! I will be adding a tutorial window soon to introduce users to the site and show how to use it. Also I am looking for suggestions on statistics to add to the quorum explorer. There are other projects that go in depth with set theory to produce complicated stats, however I would like to only introduce statistics that would be meaningful to someone without a background in math such as the percentage of trust attained over the whole network. Of course the calculation can still be complex, but the end result displayed to the user must be clear.

    Implemented a tutorial window that appears for first visitors. It will be refined in a later release. Stream buttons have been replaced with new switch toggles with labels, and button/header text has been replaced with a more futuristic font. The quorum explorer will be updated tonight with node list ordering by rank (measured by proportion of trust received), and the right panel will receive a ui update to better present the information. Loading screens will also be added. Following this update more planet textures will be added and the account explorer will receive ui improvements.

    Have a bigger update to share.

    Introducing planetary quorum explorer:

    It shares the same functionality as the original globe quorum explorer, but is now displayed as a 3D graph. Hover over the planets to see their name, and click them to enter node view.

    Single node view:

    50 high quality planet textures have been added to make this possible. 1000+ variations are generated on the spot and picked randomly to create the scene. The planets in the main activity explorer have also been updated with these textures.

    This idea was inspired by the Adventures in Galactic Consensus web comic on the Stellar site


    See it live at http://galactic.vision/planetary_quorum.html

    Freitag -Ui improvements (more readable text to describe operations, cleaner navigation)

    NICE PROJECT!

    I have some experience in UX/UI design and may be able to help. PM me if you need anything!

        willd Thanks! Definitely interested in any feedback you have to improve the design of the application. There's no PMing on this site though. Are you on discord, keybase, or slack?

            Added a search function to the nav bar! Search any public key to enter the planet/stats view. Still have a few bugs to iron out here, but it works as long as you enter a valid public key.